dao knowledge

knowledge Life is Beauty, Terror, Knowledge. A crucial part of following Tao is seeking knowledge All the efforts of self-cultivation are meant to make us a fit vehicle for that search. Sometimes what we learn is not pleasant. With learning, we glimpse life as it really is, and that is difficult to bear. That is why spiritual progress is slow; not because no one will tell us the secrets, but because we ourselves must overcome sentiment and fear before we can grasp it. There is an underbelly of terror to all life. It is suffering, it is hurt. Deep within all of us are intense fears that have left few of us whole. Life’s terrors haunt us, attack us, leave ugly cuts. To buffer ourselves, we dwell on beauty, we collect things, we fall in love, we desperately try to make something lasting in our lives. We take beauty as the only worthwhile thing in this existence, but it cannot veil cursing, violence, randomness, and injustice. Only knowledge remove this fear. If we were shown the whole truth, we could not stand it. Both lovely and horrible details make us human, and when knowledge threatens to show us our follies, we may realize that we are not yet ready to leave them behind. Then the veil closes again, and we sit meditating before it, trying to prepare ourselves for the moment when we dare to part the curtain completely. Knowledge 365 Tao daily meditations Deng Ming-Dao (author) ISBN 0-06-250223-9 Thangka of Shakya Yeshe Silk China, Ming Dynasty, Xuande reign (1426-1435) H: 108 cm; W: 63.5 cm Norbulingka Palace Collection Published: Precious Deposits, vol. 3, pp. 150-151, no. 55 TIBET: TREASURES FROM THE ROOF OF THE WORLD Travelers trekked thousands of miles to see them. Emperors presented them as gifts. We will see the same sacred treasures for the first time in the Western World in the groundbreaking exhibition, Tibet: Treasures From The Roof Of The World. Exquisitely created sacred objects, all with great cultural significance, are making their first journey to the Western World. Tibet: Treasures From The Roof Of The World offers a rare glimpse into a culture both opulent and deeply spiritual. The exhibition features objects drawn exclusively from collections from the Dalai Lama's magnificent residence at the Potala Palace, as well as the recently established Tibet Museum in the magical Tibetan capital of Lhasa. Shown here is an imperially-commissioned portrait of the prominent Lama Shakya Yeshe (1354-1435), one of the eight greatest disciples of Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Gelug order. In 1408, Emperor Yongle, of the Ming Dynasty, sent an invitation to Tsongkhapa to visit the Ming capital. Tsongkhapa refused the invitation, so in 1413, Yongle sent a second invitation. This time, Tsongkhapa delegated Shakya Yeshe, who arrived in Nanjing the next year. There, he built temples, initiated monks and, in 1415, was given the title Da Ci Fawang (Tibetan: Byams chen chos rje, "Dharma King of Great Loving Kindness"), one of several princely religious titles given by Yongle to great Tibetan Lamas. Shakya Yeshe, renowned for his fund-raising abilities, used the gifts he brought back from China to help found Sera Monastery in 1419. In 1429, Shakya Yeshe returned to China, during the reign of Emperor Xuande (1426-1435), this time to the new northern capital at Beijing, where he demonstrated his abilities as a healer by curing the emperor's ills. He also toured the sacred mountain Wutaishan, Mongolia, and Amdo (present-day Qinghai province). In 1434, the emperor granted him another, even more exalted title (consisting of thirty-eight Chinese characters). The next year, in 1435, he died on his way home to Tibet. The earlier of these two images (shown here) is embroidered silk and shows the Lama as a younger man, seated in meditation on a lotus throne, with his hands in a gesture of preaching, carrying two lotuses at shoulder level, which support the bell and vajra. His hair is knotted into a chignon and he wears a three-leaf crown. He is surrounded by an elaborate "throne of glory," surmounted by Garuda (the mount of the Indian deity Vishnu and enemy of the nagas). In the upper corners of the embroidered portrait are images of White Tara and Vajradhara. The portrait was apparently remounted with embroidered silk that was once part of a Qing Dynasty imperial robe. T A O t e C H I N G s e v e n t e e n The best rulers are scarcely known by their subjects; The next best are loved and praised; The next are feared; The next despised: They have no faith in their people, And their people become unfaithful to them. When the best rulers achieve their purpose Their subjects claim the achievement as their own. receive a full HTML copy of the daily meditation sent directly to your inbox, please send a note with the words “subscribe tao” in the subject line to duckdaotsu

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